TikTok's Content Posting API: the limits, the audit and the rules nobody tells you

If you market an app on TikTok, automating posts through TikTok's own Content Posting API sounds like the obvious move. It is a good API. It is also more restricted than most people expect, especially in the first weeks. This is the checklist we wish we'd had.

Before the audit: everything is private

Every new API client starts unaudited, and an unaudited client can only publish private posts:

• Posts must use the privacy level SELF_ONLY ("only me").
• The TikTok account itself must be private when the post goes out. Posting to a public account fails with the error unaudited_client_can_only_post_to_private_accounts.
• At most five different creators can post through the app in a 24-hour window.

That's enough to build and test end to end, but not to run a real public account. To lift the limits you submit the app for TikTok's Content Posting API audit.

What the audit looks at

The audit is mostly about the posting screen you show the creator. TikTok's Content Sharing Guidelines ask for things like:

1. Showing the creator's nickname and avatar, so they know which account they're posting to.
2. A privacy setting the creator picks themselves, with no default pre-selected, using the options TikTok returns for that creator.
3. Comment, Duet and Stitch toggles that respect what the creator's account allows.
4. A commercial-content disclosure: "Your brand" for promoting yourself, "Branded content" for paid partnerships, with the matching label shown to the creator.
5. A note that posting means agreeing to TikTok's Music Usage Confirmation.
6. A preview, and nothing sent to TikTok until the creator explicitly confirms.

The guidelines also list unacceptable use cases. One of them is a utility tool that only uploads content to accounts you or your team manage. Internal-only tools are unlikely to pass, so plan to build something other creators can use.

Rate limits and daily caps

• Publishing: roughly 6 requests per minute per user access token for the publish endpoints.
• Status checks: a separate, higher limit for polling a post's status.
• Per account per day: TikTok's guidelines describe a cap of around 15 posts per creator account per day, shared across every API client posting to that account. Third-party schedulers count too.

Buffer exposes its own view of this as a daily posting limit per channel. We've seen it report 25 for a TikTok channel, so check the number your tools report rather than assuming one.